No
doubt the degraded quality of congressional oversight astonishes Thomas
Pickering, the distinguished American diplomat who oversaw the State
Department's Benghazi review board—although he tries not to say so too
directly. For his demanding and difficult effort—only the most recent in a long
history of public service under both Republican and Democratic
administrations—Pickering has found himself under sustained attack by
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the excitable partisan who chairs
the House Government Reform Committee.

Earlier
this month, Issa subpoenaed Pickering to deliver a taped deposition to the
committee behind closed doors, without offering him a chance to answer in
public the charges already lodged by Republicans against the Accountability
Review Board (ARB) report authored by Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen.

Immediately
prior to this latest skirmish, Pickering spoke with The National Memo about the
ARB report, political maneuvering by the administration's adversaries and media
coverage of the Benghazi "scandal." Asked whether he had ever
experienced or seen anything resembling Issa's conduct, Pickering said, "No,
I haven't.... I suspect that on this particular issue, this guy [Issa] is
driven by whatever will maximize his capability to be tough on the
administration. This seems to be one effort he's kind of landed on to make that
happen. But I'm only guessing here."

Meanwhile,
Pickering hasn't noticed much attention being given on Capitol Hill to holding
hearings on the extensive recommendations that he and Mullen made to improve
security in dangerous posts around the world—instead of the notorious
"talking points" developed by the White House last September.

"So
far I haven't seen any evidence of that."

For
Pickering, the subpoena issued by Issa must be especially confusing. Ever since
the Government Reform Committee announced its planned hearings on Benghazi last
winter, its leadership has repeatedly failed to establish a time when the
review board chairman—perhaps the most important witness—could testify.
Although at first Pickering says he thought they were "genuinely
interested" in getting his testimony, he became "increasingly less
inclined" to appear before the committee "as the thing became more
politicized."

Before
the May 8 hearing, he made a final effort to arrange to testify publicly. But
via the White House and the State Department, he learned that his presence was
not desired. Before Issa issued his subpoena to Pickering, he and Mullen had
sent a letter requesting an opportunity to testify publicly—and said that they
are "not inclined to give testimony in a closed hearing before that
[happens]."

Tripoli
Soldiers Wouldn’t Have Helped

Having
listened to Issa and others take potshots at him, Mullen and their report for
several weeks, Pickering wants to rebut some of the misinformation they have
propagated, for the record. He said he wants to address claims that the
military "could have relieved or in fact changed the situation by sending
men or equipment or both the night of the event"—and specifically
assertions by Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, that
four Special Forces soldiers should have been dispatched to Benghazi from
Tripoli. Pickering says those four officers would have arrived in Benghazi too
late to help and were needed in Tripoli anyway to treat the wounded who were
brought there after the Benghazi attack.

"The
third question that has come up," said Pickering, "is why we didn't
investigate the secretary of state" and her deputies. The "simple and
straightforward answer" is that "they played no role in the
decision-making which was relevant to the preparations for meeting the security
crisis in Benghazi," and the role they did play on the night of Sept. 11,
2012, "was fairly clearly portrayed to us by other people who attended the
meetings, and we had no questions about it. We thought that what they did made sense
and fit exactly what should have been done."

What
Pickering may mention, if and when he does testify in public, is the role of
Congress, which he considers primarily responsible for under-funding the
protection of diplomatic posts abroad. Fortunately, legislative idiocy has not
prevented the redirection of almost $1.5 billion in funds to improve security
in dozens of posts, both physically and with additional security officers and
Marine guards.

Aside
from the weak oversight of Congress, Pickering also seems critical of the media
coverage of Benghazi. In preparing to chair the Accountability Review Board,
Pickering said, he "asked for, received and read all of the press
reporting that the State Department could find and put together for me,
covering the events in Benghazi and the aftermath, from the initial attack
right through to the day we submitted our report."

He
undertook this required reading because "I thought there would be useful
ideas, leads, analyses that had to be taken into account. What I found in general
was a very significant amount of wild, and I think fictionalized, made-up kind
of information.

"And
in effect much of this alleged a kind of betrayal of those people, in one way
or another, all of which I thought bordered on Pulitzer Prize creative fiction
but didn't bear any relationship to what we were able to determine, both from
the documentary evidence, from the extensive film footage that we had an
opportunity to review carefully, and of course the interviews we had with
people who were on the spot." Indeed, Pickering believes that the ARB
report is "the best compilation I've seen of what actually took
place."

Pickering
won't comment on the "talking points" controversy, which wasn't
relevant to the ARB investigation. But he said he resents broader allegations
by the Republicans and their allies in the media—in particular "the
allegation that I would be engaged in a cover-up.... I hope people feel that
I'm a more honest and hopefully more dedicated public servant than that.

"Our
interest was to do everything we could to find out what happened,"
Pickering said, "and then on the basis of that [investigation] to make as
clear recommendations as we could to help the State Department and other
agencies so that it wouldn't happen again.

“That
was our motive, that was the driver, and that's where we went. Any effort to
cover up would have been a betrayal.... We did everything we could in terms of
the national interest in saving future lives." He believes it is vital to
defend the credibility of the report and prevent it from being undermined.
"That's why I'm interested in talking to the American public now, because
I think the report is a good report. And so far I haven't heard anything that I
believe we didn't consider carefully."

As
for his critics, he said, "I would hope they would read the report. If
they have, maybe they need to read it again." He laughed. "Both Mike
Mullen and I believe that it's important that we have this opportunity, either
through Chairman Issa or some other committee, to deal with the people who have
concerns about the report and tell them how we were thinking and why we reached
the conclusions we did."